‘MISOGYNY’ HAS NO SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF ANY KIND: THE EVIDENCE IS OF PHILOGYNY

Abstract

There is no published science paper demonstrating the existence of ‘misogyny’ defined as the general hostile or negative attitude of men towards women. On the contrary, the notion is not just unsupported but contradicted by all pertinent findings. Data on either implicit or explicit ‘gender attitudes’ show consideration towards females by males either substantially greater than they afford other males—philogyny—or, at worst, neutrality; this even in special conditions in which it might be most expected. The failure to find evidence of ‘misogyny’ has been hidden by eliding the notion with the wider one of ‘sexism’, and in the absence of support for ‘hostile sexism’, ‘benevolent sexism’ was hypothesised; but this also has no basis, given the deeply flawed operational definitions of ‘sexism’ employed in studies. Taken together as ‘ambivalent sexism’, the mode in which this supposedly causes harm—stereotyping according to sex (dubbed ‘stereotype threat’)—has been comprehensively debunked. ‘Misogyny’ and ‘sexism’ have become defined circularly and are, therefore, entirely non-scientific notions in being unfalsifiable. However weakly defined, ‘misogyny’ evidently is nothing but ideological invention: a counter-factual, thereby itself an actually (anti-male) ‘hostile sexist’ notion and term that should never be employed in a scientific discourse other than in its investigation as at best a questionable, highly pejorative construct. Indeed, the use of the label should be investigated as an expression of misandry.

Keywords: misogyny, philogyny, misandry, gender attitudes, sexism